While retelling the Mr. O’Neill creative instigation story didn’t excite me, considering motivations for people to over deliver or give too much was intriguing. Jan’s creative instigation inspired this post with 21 ideas for reasons to over deliver or not.

14 Reasons to Over Deliver

When you’re doing something for someone, here are 14 reasons you might want to over deliver versus what they expect:

It creates greater value for them (thinking about value as the relationship between “Benefits” relative to the “Cost to receive the benefits.”

They may not be asking for enough of what they need or should be considering.

7 Reasons to Not Over Deliver

The question about whether to over deliver or not certainly isn’t one-sided. There are also reasons where you might rightly decide to not over deliver for someone:

They’re asking for the wrong thing or something they don’t need and giving them more of it won’t be beneficial to them.

They’re demanding or expecting too much already.

They’ve not acted in good faith in the relationship.

The relationship is on its last legs and doesn’t warrant investing any more in it.

What they’ve asked for keeps changing so much you can’t even be sure you’re delivering what they expected originally.

You’ve done everything you can.

They aren’t able to appreciate any more than what they asked for originally.

Do you have a tendency to give too much?

I didn’t go into creating this list with a target of 21 ideas, or making 2/3 of them reasons to over deliver and 1/3 reasons not to do it. But in any event, there’s a certain numerical (and business) sense in those ratios, at least from my perspective. Makes sense that you might try to over deliver about 2/3 of the time.

How about you? What is your thinking when you consider whether or not to over deliver? – Mike Brown

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